N.F.L. Extends Roger Goodell’s Contract, Ending Weeks of Discord

Roger Goodell has been the commissioner of the N.F.L. since 2006.Credit
Seth Wenig/Associated Press

The N.F.L. on Wednesday extended the contract of Commissioner Roger Goodell for another five years, ending an unusually rancorous monthslong standoff with Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys’ owner, who wanted to derail the deal.

A committee of owners negotiating Goodell’s compensation signed off on a contract worth roughly $200 million over five years, which is in line with his current deal. But unlike his current arrangement, nearly 90 percent of the potential compensation will be paid only if a variety of financial targets are met.

The N.F.L. and its commissioner routinely negotiate such matters behind closed doors. But this year, disorder among owners spilled out in public, leading to an extraordinary tit-for-tat of threats of legal action and rebukes that added to the sense of a league anxious over its future.

Despite declining television ratings, persistent worries about the safety of the game and a backlash against the league because of players protesting during the national anthem, the league is still a financial juggernaut, with $14 billion in annual revenue. That is a big reason the owners are comfortable keeping Goodell — who became commissioner in 2006 — on for another five years.

But with anxiety over the league’s weaknesses growing, Jones and other owners wanted to ensure Goodell continued to focus on growing the league’s business. As a result, they have insisted that most of his compensation in the coming years be based on the N.F.L. hitting financial targets, with various owners signing off on bonuses linked to the targets. Goodell’s guaranteed salary before those potential bonuses will be about $4 million a year.

In a letter sent to every owner on Wednesday, Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons and the chairman of the committee, said that Goodell’s contract extension was “fully consistent with ‘market’ compensation” and was “in the best interests of ownership.” Contrary to Jones’s efforts to undermine the deal, Blank said there was nearly a consensus to offer Goodell an extension and to move quickly “to avoid further controversy surrounding this issue.”

Jones sparked one of the most bitter intraleague fights in years when he threatened to sue the members of the six-man compensation committee, made up of the owners of the Chiefs, the Falcons, the Giants, the Patriots, the Steelers and the Texans. The committee had been working since May on the new contract, which would take effect in March 2019. The owners were eager to finish the deal before talks to renegotiate the league’s labor and media deals begin in earnest in the next couple of years.

Jones, one of the most powerful and mercurial owners, had other plans. Though he voted along with every other owner in May to extend Goodell’s contract and empower the compensation committee to work out the details, he tried to disrupt the negotiations starting in August, after Goodell suspended Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott for his role in a domestic violence case.

After months of pressuring the committee as an ad hoc member, and lobbying the wider group of owners, Jones in early November told the six committee members that he had drawn up legal papers and would sue them if they did not bend to his will. The unusually caustic showdown that followed, which has led the committee to communicate with Jones only through lawyers, all but ended last week when Jones dropped his threat.

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Jones has denied that he was trying to upend the contract talks as payback for the suspension. But the timing of his efforts looked more than coincidental. Two days before Elliott’s suspension in mid-August, Jones signed off on the broad outline of Goodell’s new contract, which was based largely on bonuses that Jones wanted as a way to ensure that the commissioner worked hard to raise the league’s revenue.

After Elliott was suspended, Jones began to insist that all 32 owners, not just the committee, have a chance to vote on the new contract, because conditions at the league had changed, including a continued decline in television ratings and a widening controversy over players refusing to stand for the national anthem.

In October, Jones persuaded some owners that it was best to delay completing the contract to avoid the public spectacle of giving the commissioner a deal worth potentially as much as $200 million while residents in Florida and Texas were still recovering from hurricanes and President Trump was criticizing the league for not forcing players to stand for the anthem.

But after Elliott’s legal appeals to his suspension ran out, and the committee continued to work quietly on the contract extension, Jones told the committee on Nov. 2 that he had hired the high-profile lawyer David Boies and that he was prepared to go to court to stop the negotiations. Faced with potential punishment, Jones dropped his threat to sue just before Thanksgiving.

Blank, the Falcons’ owner, said that the committee was within its rights to complete the contract and that the committee members would keep all owners apprised of their work. Almost in defiance of Jones, the committee accelerated talks to finish the contract. After he spent months trying to derail the negotiations, his efforts, in effect, backfired.

In uniting to fend off Jones and to allow the compensation committee to finish its negotiations, the owners reinforced the league’s longstanding policy of delegating work and not letting one owner accumulate too much power.

“This decision shows that no single owner is more important than the other owners,” Marc Ganis, a consultant to several N.F.L. teams, said. He added that keeping Goodell in the commissioner’s job gives the league stability while it prepares for a new labor deal and negotiations with its broadcast partners.

A version of this article appears in print on December 7, 2017, on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: N.F.L. Owners Extend Commissioner’s Contract. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe